Victorian Video Nasties
John Springhall on violence in the 19th-century media
On June 15th, 1868, a Conservative member of parliament, J.G. Hubbard, later Lord Addington, asked the Tory Home Secretary, Gathorne Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook:
Whether his attention had been directed to the lamentable amount of juvenile criminality, largely attributable to the spread of cheap publications and theatrical representations of an exciting and immoral character, which corrupt the children of the lower classes, and stimulate them into courses of dishonesty and vice; and, whether the Government will propose any remedy for these growing and most serious evils?
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